The U.S. Department of Education will issue clarifications on a series of higher-education regulations it released last fall, succumbing to pressure from colleges that say the rules are too complex to be implemented as published.

The agency will release “Dear Colleague” letters in an attempt “to answer questions we’ve heard about the regulations,” Deputy Undersecretary James Kvaal said. The topics to be addressed will include incentive compensation and state authorization, two particularly thorny issues for for-profit colleges.